Big Fines — Not Fine!
February 29th, 2008 by Peter SudermanSo Microsoft got hit with the most ridiculous — by which I mean the biggest — fine in European Commission history. At this point, the EU’s crusade against the company just seems obnoxious. It’s probably (okay, certainly) too much to ask the EU to come out against anti-trust entirely, but the continuing, escalating fines they’re imposing are just starting to seem boorish. What do they have left to prove at this point? Microsoft’s a large corporation that’s succeeded spectacularly well in the software marketplace, and it seems EU regulators for some reason feel the need to punish them for doing so.
I suppose I just find the entire reasoning behind fining a company for “abuse of a dominant position” nonsensical — especially when regulators try to claim that they’re “promoting competition.” The whole point of competition is to stay on top once you get there, not let your competitors leech off of your work. that, in turn, should lead strong competitors to fight harder and develop more innovative ways to beat whoever’s got the biggest marketshare. Forced sharing in the form of interoperability mandates just allows other companies the opportunity to skate on the innovations of another. It doesn’t promote competition so much as it discourages innovation. Sadly, EU regulators don’t seem to see it that way.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
And now the EU bureaucrats are going after Intel…this stuff strikes me as naked protectionism.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Well, it is sad that the european union is the one doing the job that the FTC was supposed to do long ago. On one hand it is obvious that European regulators love to target american companies (just look at all the silly processes against apple, google, intel and microsoft) it is just natural, protectionism at its biggest expresion.
On the other hand, how do you reconcile monopolies with free markets ? I want an honest answer Mr Suderman.
Microsoft is a convicted monopoly, and in this fine in particular it was abusing certain patents to charge outrageous sums of money for access to licenses for communication protocols with its servers, effectively closing down any competition and by extension defeating the purpose of a free market. If you bother to research the subject you will notice that Microsoft had several years to address the issues from the European Union but it choose not to do so until the last minute. The amount of the fine is the sum of the daily penalties that were agreed upon.
So while I agree that the Europeans are using protectionist tactics, I have no sympathy for a monopoly being fined for not abiding to the rules of the markets it wants access to (i.e the european one). It is up to microsofot, if they don’t like it they are not forced to sell their products in europe, the beauty of freedom.
March 1st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
“not let your competitors leech off of your work.”
Tell that to the dude who started Apple…you know…the guy that Bill Gates ripped off in the first place.
“how do you reconcile monopolies with free markets?”
I’m going to guess that they don’t reconcile them…they defend the de-facto monopolies like Microsoft, which is wrong IMO.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
You know, after Kinnan’s scaremongering and his other cliches about EU bureaucrats, etc., I find that I must take back a statement I made earlier. Suderman’s the smartest and best blogger here, not Kinnan.